La La Land breaks the record for most Golden Globe wins ever. Its won 7 awards including Best Actor for Ryan Gosling, Best Actress for Emma Stone, Best Director for Damien Chazelle and Best Picture of the Year. This movie which took 6 years to get made. Yes, 6 years!!!!
At the production notes, La La Land began with a provocative question: Could there be a film that married the magic and energy of the most poignant French and American musicals of all time with our more jaded modern age? And in a world where much of cinema is darker and more digitized than ever, could audiences still respond to the sweet call of love, romance and dancing in the moonlight?
Chazelle said: “With La La Land, I wanted to do a love story and I also wanted to create a musical like the ones that entranced me as a kid. I wanted to explore how you use color, sets, costumes and all these very expressionistic elements of old-school movie making to tell a story that takes place in our times.”
Well, I know Damien Sayre Chazelle from Whiplash. A movie before La La land. Whiplash is a 2014 American independent drama starring Miles Teller as Andrew Neiman, an ambitious young jazz student at Shaffer Conservatory in New York who plays the drums and J. K. Simmons as Terence Fletcher, a jazz instructor at Shaffer. Its story about relationship between of them. Nieman is a young jazz drummer who never give up and always survive in every challenges of his ruthless teacher, Fletcher. Whiplash told how to pursuit of greatness and do your best when you are depressed. Actually, I really really really enjoyed not only because its movie about Jazz but also its teach me about passion, idealism and dream. I cried when the credit title in the screen. Very emotional movie. At the 87th Academy Awards, Whiplash won Best Film Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Supporting Actor for Simmons, and was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture.
Back to La La Land, I saw very different angle from Chazelle. Its still about dreamers. The story told two dreamers living in the City of Stars, Los Angeles, California and they are a soulful jazz pianist, Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) and a fresh-faced actress, Mia (Emma Stone). They met on the freeway of LA. Actually, they each other doesnt have future plan. Both are focused on the kind of impossible dream in the city. Sebastian is trying to get people to care about traditional jazz, I means hardcore jazz, in a town that filled with peoples who only want easy listening music or pop. And in the meanwhile, Mia is reaching her dream as a monolog actress which not popular in the city beside she went from audition to other audition. Sebastian and Mia are hard person. They believe, with idealism and high passion someday they will success and their dreams will come true. But at the point, they both must deal with reality: how long they can survive with their ideal perception?
La La Land is a story about how Sebastian and Mia did balance their life and art. Then, how they balance reality and dreams? And also, specifically, how they balance their relationship to art with their relationships with other people? Its story about peoples who have giant dreams that drive them, that bring them together, but also tear them apart. La La Land told the answers in every problems with sound, music, colors and words. The film also showcases how culturally relevant the marriage between music, movement, acting, singing and storytelling.
A masterpiece!!!